Leadership quotes

The leadership quotes worth keeping are the ones that survive contact with an actual team. Most of them are not about charisma or vision or any of the qualities leadership books tend to emphasize. They are about patience, judgment, owning your mistakes, and treating people like adults. The lines here come from operators, generals, founders, and the rare politicians who wrote honestly about the job. Skip the ones that sound like a poster. Keep the ones that sound like someone who has actually done the thing.

• You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

  Winston Churchill

• It always seems impossible until it's done.

  Nelson Mandela

• People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

  Maya Angelou

• The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

• Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

• Courage is grace under pressure.

  Ernest Hemingway

• If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

  Maya Angelou

• No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

• Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear.

  George Addair

• If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.

  Malcolm X

• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

  Abraham Lincoln

• Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

  Seneca · Letters to Lucilius

• I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.

  Nelson Mandela · Long Walk to Freedom

• Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend?

  Abraham Lincoln

• Stay hungry, stay foolish.

  Stewart Brand · Whole Earth Catalog

• You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

  Eleanor Roosevelt · You Learn by Living

• You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.

  Zig Ziglar

• A woman is like a tea bag — you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

• Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

  Winston Churchill

• The price of greatness is responsibility.

  Winston Churchill · Speech at Harvard

• Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.

  Brene Brown · Daring Greatly

• We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already.

  J.K. Rowling · Harvard Commencement Speech